Avengers Thanksgiving Special
by whimsical-summer
Summary: The Avengers spend their first Thanksgiving together at Stark Tower, and for once, something actually goes as planned (kind of). Team fic, fluff, a very little bit of Pepperony and Thor/Jane.


**Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers.**

**Hi! This is my first posted fanfic, so tell me what you think! I know it's two days late, but I was away.**

**Please tell me what you think! I'll add more if enough people want it.**

The top ten floors of Stark Tower were filled with chaos - even more chaos than usual, that is. Bruce, Tony, and Jane were messing around in the lab. They were supposed to be looking for ways to test string theory, but the rest of the Tower's inhabitants were fairly certain that the loud explosions which could be heard three floors up didn't have anything to do with their actual work.

Pepper and Steve were in the kitchen, stuffing the turkey and making other holiday musts like mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Clint was supposed to be helping them, considering the fact that he was somehow a better cook than all of them, but he was currently running for his life all around the Tower, chased by a nearly-frothing-at-the-mouth Natasha because he had broken into her personal armory and replaced all her guns with fake, plastic ones and a cardboard cutout of a turkey waving a flag that read "Don't Shoot, Save the Turkeys!" No one gave him a remaining lifespan of more than three seconds, so they had to make do without his help.

Darcy was setting the dining room table while Thor started a fire in the fireplace. Jarvis had the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade playing on the television.

Pepper and Steve rolled their eyes at each other and tried to contain their laughter when Clint started screaming (though he'd probably object to the word choice; according to him, he was much too tough to do anything as girly as 'scream'). Cries of "I didn't mean to! Stark dared me!" echoed throughout the Tower.

Darcy poked her head into the kitchen. "Cap'n Steve, don't you think you might want to, you know, do something about that? I mean, isn't Clint kind of important to the team?"

Steve shook his head and held up his hands. "I almost hate to say it, but it's a lost cause. It's his problem."

"Hey, what happened to 'one for all, all for one?'" Bruce asked, drawn out of the lab by the smell of food.

Tony followed, a step behind the doctor. "Our brave and mighty captain is just afraid of Natasha."

Steve felt his cheeks heat up. "No, I'm not! I just want to let them resolve their own issues."

Tony chuckled. "You're scared that she'd beat you up!"

"Don't be ridiculous, she's a perfectly reasonable person." His words were drowned out by Clint's renewed yells. "I mean, she's a very . . ."

"Just stop talking, Cap, you're only digging yourself deeper," Bruce advised.

"All right, stop teasing him, both of you," Pepper said, joining the conversation, though she was smiling. A few months of living with multiple superheroes had accustomed her to this sort of daily conflict.

All talking stopped when Natasha herself strolled into the kitchen, an overly-friendly smile plastered on her face. "Stark," she began, ever so sweetly, "Did you happen to dare Barton to steal my guns?"

Everyone turned to stare at him, and he suddenly looked very uncomfortable. "Well, um . . . Bruce bet twenty bucks on your reaction!"

"Stark, how could you -" Bruce began, but Natasha turned her too-composed expression on him and he quickly shut up.

She slid her gaze back to the billionaire. "Where are they?" she asked, very softly.

"You know, Natasha, I really wouldn't know." She raised an eyebrow, and he raised his voice quickly. "I swear, I don't know!"

Just then, Clint shuffled in, making for the refrigerator and rubbing his eye. Pepper, obviously taking pity on him, opened the freezer door and tossed him an ice pack. He nodded at her. "Thanks, Pepper." Ignoring Tony, who was not-so-subtly trying to get his attention, he put the ice pack over his eye. "You ruined my good looks, 'Tash."

She rolled her eyes. "Wasn't much to ruin."

The rest of them were surprised when Clint shrugged, unfazed. "I know, I know, you like the rugged look, and I just pull it off so well that you couldn't resist."

No one could say what might have happened next if Thor hadn't come in to announce that the hearth was burning merrily. Everyone except Natasha started talking at once, pouncing on the distraction. Tony clapped Clint on the back and immediately started singing "Over the River and Through the Wood," which was the only Thanksgiving song he knew.

Anyone with self-preservation instincts exited the kitchen very, very quickly.

**-Scene Break-**

An hour later, Clint had caved and revealed that he'd hidden the weapons in the heating vents. Everyone felt much more at ease now that the crisis had been averted. As the majority of the Avengers and their friends waited in the living room for the food to be ready, Tony continued to sing. He might not have known any other songs for the holiday, but he did know all twelve verses and was singing at a constant loop. He was in the middle of the twenty-ninth round. They'd already tried telling him to shut up, but of course he hadn't, alternating between shouting the words tunelessly and humming quietly. Now they tried to ignore him, which they had learned was a semi-successful method.

When he started humming the thirtieth round, Darcy gave up and put her hands over her ears. If this was Thanksgiving, she could only imagine what Christmas was going to be like.

This whole thing had been Pepper and Steve's idea, and Tony had agreed after just a little convincing, probably because it was an opportunity for more pandemonium. The others had also conceded with varying degrees of enthusiasm, because turning down one of Steve's ideas was hard enough, and near-impossible when he had Pepper's support. Darcy, who had been hanging around Stark Tower ever since it had been rebuilt and who was clued in to at least some of the secrets, had also been invited. She had accepted, because her own family wasn't holding Thanksgiving 'til Saturday and besides, this was something she hadn't wanted to miss. It was one of the first times that the Avengers & Company were doing something as more of a family than a team, and Darcy thought it was actually really cute, though she didn't know if she was going to tell them that, particularly.

She looked up and saw Natasha frowning at Clint's slightly swollen eye. "I can't believe you didn't block that punch," the spy said quietly. Darcy was a little surprised; she'd never expected to hear Natasha ever sound so contrite or - dare she think it - _tender_. Clint smirked and murmured something that made the redhead crack a real, if small, smile. "We should practice that sequence tomorrow in the gym," she replied, and that was the end of that. Darcy shrugged and chalked the whole thing up to their odd, back-and-forth, best-friend-relationship-thing and then focused on blocking out the "trot fast, my dapple gray!" and the "for 'tis Thanksgiving Day!" that Tony was helpfully providing.

She didn't know how much more she could take when Steve joined them, free from the kitchen for a while, and said that he couldn't remember a Thanksgiving when people didn't play football to work up their appetites for dinner. This idea was quickly seconded by Clint, and even Tony stopped humming long enough to cajole Bruce into playing with them. Darcy shared a glance with Jane and the two of them stood up, as well.

While the food cooked, the six Avengers plus Jane and Darcy made their way outside, where they split up and proceeded to play what might have been the strangest, most impassioned game of rooftop football ever. The teams were fairly even, with Thor, Natasha, Darcy and Tony against Steve, Clint, Jane, and Bruce. The Asgardian, the supersoldier, and the assassins all had incredible hand-eye coordination, and they balanced the comparative ineptness of the others quite well. Darcy turned out to be the wild card - no one had expected that she had three sports-obsessed brothers and that she could throw better than Tony could. She was secretly pleased that she had shown up the billionaire, at least for a moment. The game ended when Bruce accidentally tackled Clint, who was in possession of the ball, and both were subsequently tackled by Thor (though a fraction of a second too late, Steve tackled the Asgardian). This gave Natasha the opportunity to wrest the ball away and send it flying to Darcy, who ran and caught it despite coming much too close to the edge of the roof for her liking.

The game then foreseeably degenerated into an argument about who had been cheating ("Using Mjolnir wasn't a fair move, Thor!" to which Tony, of course, replied, "There's nothing against it in the rulebook, so there, Barton!"). After all was said and done, the general consensus that a rematch was necessary was reached and then they all hurried inside to wash up.

When Pepper finally stepped out of the kitchen, a triumphant grin on her face, everyone practically fell out of their seats and scrambled to get to the table before she could even say anything. They were in the process of shoving each other over the seating arrangement when Tony's girlfriend told them to settle down because it was time for dinner.

Ten minutes later, they were piling delicious, steaming food of all kinds on their plates - as Darcy already knew, superheroes ate quite a lot. There was food in abundance, like warm corn and spinach (which Bruce apparently liked) and sweet potatoes along with the other staples of the season. Clint had been of some use in the kitchen after all, and they could all smell his apple pie, even from the living room, because he'd made three. A hush fell over them when Steve walked in, bearing the turkey on a huge platter. He set it down, then sat down in between Thor and Bruce, and insisted on saying Grace, remarking that it wasn't going to kill them, they only had to listen respectfully, and so everyone stared quietly at their food while he thanked God for the meal. Darcy felt a lump rise in her throat as he went on to say how grateful he was for friends and family, and then he said "Amen," and everyone dove into their food.

**-Scene Break-**

When they had shoveled as much food as they could into their mouths, and really, really, couldn't even eat one more bite, and then had forced down desert, they moved from the dining room to the living room, where they turned on the big game. No one was really a fan of either of the teams, but it was traditional, and they were doing everything the traditional way this year, so they each picked a side and cheered at the television anyway.

The real party at Stark Tower started after the fourth quarter had ended. While Tony teased Bruce and Steve for rooting for the losing team (the underdog, of course) Jarvis switched on the music. No one knew how it really started, exactly, but one moment they'd just been milling about and chatting and the next they were dancing in the open space between the dining table and the couches. They called compliments to Thor and Jane, who had become inexplicably good dancers, and they laughed when, at the end of a song, Tony and Pepper adopted the same pose as the people in the Kissing Sailor photograph.

No one, not even Tony, said much about Natasha and Clint, dancing together in their own little corner until she whispered something to him and they separated at the end of a song. Natasha walked over to Steve, who was sitting by himself with a forced smile on his face.

"Come on, Cap," she said, her tone a little less brisk than normal, and offered him a hand. "We're going to teach you how to dance."

With everyone watching the newest turn of events, Steve's cheeks turned red for the second time that evening and he shook his head. "No, thanks, it's really okay -"

The rest of the room erupted as everyone shouted encouragement at him, but then Tony yelled way too loudly, "I knew you were afraid of her, Rogers!"

Steve got up very suddenly, his expression taking on more determination than reluctance, and he allowed Natasha to lead him out to the makeshift dance floor. Jarvis played a simple waltz to make him feel more comfortable, and Natasha put her hand on his shoulder and they started dancing. Everyone watched Steve's progress, and after a few songs, he was twirling the Black Widow around with relative ease. That was when a smiling Darcy cut in after she'd danced a little with Bruce. Steve hesitated and stumbled around for several steps (he didn't know her as well as he knew Natasha) until she told him, "Suck it up and dance, Steve." So he did, and before long he was laughing, really laughing.

When they just couldn't dance anymore, they collapsed on the couches again and pulled out the board games, but those got boring after Clint won _Clue _for the eighth time in a row (and that was after he bankrupted them all at _Monopoly _- they were sure he was using his circus tricks to get good rolls of the dice). That was when Tony grabbed a deck of cards and a box of poker chips, so they taught Thor how to play and found out that, surprisingly, Bruce was unbeatable. Later, when they'd all had enough to drink, the resident billionaire talked them all into playing _Truth or Dare_. The amount of blackmail material that went around during that fiasco was massive, and all of them secretly hoped that no one else remembered _anything _from that night (but of course, Jarvis was running the security cameras for Tony, so those hopes were very much in vain).

It was very late that night (or very early the next morning) when they all fell asleep on the couches, too tired to move. It had been a good Thanksgiving.


End file.
